It Could Happen Here - ShotSpotter And The Chicago Police Department, A Tale of Woe

Episode Date: December 19, 2023

Mia talks with Raven, a Chicago journalist with Jynx Press, about how ShotSpotter fails as a way to detect gunshots and how Chicago cops use it to commit crimes.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking musica, los premios, el chisme, and all things trending in my cultura. I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians, actors, and influencers. Each week, we get deep and raw life stories, combos on the issues that matter to us, and it's all packed

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or wherever you get your podcasts. Calls on Media. Call zone media. departments who occupy a city groaning under its tyranny. And with you to talk about some absolutely bat shit, Chicago police stuff. And also how Brandon Johnson, our mayor has also shit is Raven, the Chicago journalist from Jinx press.

Hi, is our mayor ever not shit? You know, no, it's holy shit. It's never not holy shit it's never not bad it's never not bad and it's always like you know the progressive darling who ran on promises and then slowly breaks them and you know breaks everyone's hearts over time yeah i i will I will say Brandon Johnson wasted absolutely no time on the

heartbreaking part. He really just wanted to rush that shit out. So there's a lot of Brandon Johnson stuff that we could talk about and we will eventually, we're going to do the episode on the migrant camp and the fucking

migrant camp and the toxic waste dump migrant camp in the the toxic waste dump but that that's gonna happen next year right now we want to talk about a different utterly insane chicago thing well this is actually a thing in other cities too i wanted to talk about shot spotter so i guess to start with can explain what ShotSpotter is for people who don't have it in their city or don't know? Well, it's in, I want to say, like 130 different cities across the country. So a lot of people probably do have it, but it's a gunshot detection system. So basically just, you know, through a bunch of fancy tech stuff, which we won't get into. And I'm not even going to pretend to understand, you know, that side of it.

It's these audio sensors that are installed all around the city, right? There's actually a lawsuit currently up and coming filed by the MacArthur Justice Center over the fact that they are primarily installed in black and brown neighborhoods and not on like the north side. And yeah, it's just a bunch of fancy little stuff that detects noises that are supposed to be gunshots. Right. So any loud popping or binging sound, you you know, could potentially set them off. Yeah. And unfortunately, as anyone who's ever been in a city and had a car backfire knows, people are just indescribably dog shit at telling what is a gunshot and what is not a gunshot. Exactly. Exactly. And I mean, there's so much evidence to like there've been i mean our here in chicago like our office of the inspector general wrote like a whole report about all of

shots bars failures but there's a bunch of other research out there across the country about how inaccurate this is and um you know it's generating tens of thousands of also like unjustified cpd deployments like because when the alert goes off the cops get deployed and you know it doesn't tell you anything about uh even if there was a gunshot like who fired fired a gun, you know, all it's telling you is in this area, you know, this was determined. So you can imagine like all of these, you know, police encounters happening in response to these alerts, like all the shit that could go wrong. Yeah. And it's CPD, right?

Like the Chicago police department's motto was shoot first, don't ask questions later. So this is a, this is an absolutely terrible idea it's just sending all of these cops on random wild goose chases yeah yeah well and it's what happened with um i mean most people probably remember the adam toledo shooting those cops you know were initially assigned to patrol that area because it was designated as a violence box, you know, and ShotSpotter brought them to the alley, like where this 13 year old kid was, you know, shot and killed by police because another, an older man was with him and fired

a gun and then handed him the weapon yeah and that's another that's another one of the problems with this technology which is that even if it does detect a gunshot the thing that detecting a gunshot does and send it to the police is send a bunch of like absolutely unhinged murderers to a place and like make them incredibly paranoid and then you know have them in like deal with the situation mode and what chicago cops do when they're in deal with the situation mode is they take out a gun they shoot a 13 year old and kill them yeah yeah and the you know the officer that shot him too had had this is like rarely talked about in the media i think i don't know it just wasn't something that came up much when that was all happening but like that officer

had a weird incident that was recorded on body cam like a little bit before he shot and killed adam toledo i don't remember if it was like months before i don't know the timeline but it was fairly close to that where he like pulled someone over at a traffic stop and was just acting really jumpy and strange uh and it was kind of investigated as like you know an unjustified traffic stop and and nothing happened with that but it's just an example of like how there were potentially warning signs because this guy was also like a war veteran you know and jumpy to begin with uh and so yeah you're sending these guys into these areas who are already ready to go off at a trigger right yeah and you know and there's like there's no actual good outcome of this because like i guess arguably the best possible outcome is the cops show up

there's nobody there and turns out to have been a false alarm but that means we're paying the cops an unbelievable amount of money to do nothing and that's the best outcome right and the the way the alerts work also too is like unless the police file a complaint that an alert was false like a false alarm it's automatically flagged in the system as like a positive because there's all this algorithmic stuff that happens like with the the shot starter detection where like yeah the the system detects it but then also it goes to like their i don't know their whole system like researchers or whatever to kind of put it all together and like package a report about what happened. And so unless the police complain and are like, oh, you know, this one was false or this was a this one was wrong.

This was a firework. This is a car backfiring. And of course, like CPD is not doing that. Yeah, because I mean, I mean, this is one of the problems with the system just inherently just inherently, even if you think that on some level, this technology could work, is that both the city all the time you know you need to give us more funding this is incredibly useful for them if you're shot spotter you don't want everyone to know that your system detects like a bird dropping an acorn out of a tree next to your sensor or whatever like you don't actually want people to know that your your system brings up false positives all the time it is actually basically completely useless right yeah and so the time and is actually basically completely useless. Right. Yeah, and so the incentive structure is just bad.

It's just, it's only going to produce bad results. Yeah, well, and it's kind of like somebody, I don't, I forget where I read this, but somebody likened it to, if you had an informant working for you and they were wrong nine times out of 10, would you still use them? Well, CPD would, like, to them well cpd would like to be fair

but like if you were a journalist and uh you had a source that lied nine times out of ten you know or was wrong nine times out of ten would you uh would you call them back would you trust that source you know well and the other thing too is this isn't even it's not even just like this is an informant right because you know shots butters wrong and enormous percentage of the time but the thing is you don't have to pay informants eight million dollars a year which is what we're paying for dog shit shots fire system yeah well and i mean the the company itself also, like they're so embedded with what's going on, like with police departments, you know, they're, ShotSpotter is leveraging their own money to try to like win shot spotter so it's like it's not just like this this uh i don't know this neutral tool that's just like out there that they're just using it's like shot far has this vested interest in uh strengthening the police and vice versa yeah and

it gets into one of these very very i mean it's a very common thing for the cops, right? But one of these unbelievably messed up spirals where like, yeah, like everyone, everyone involved has, you know, the cops want more power. These guys want more money. And the more money you give them, the more money they have to then turn around again and put back into the political system to continue buying more power, which they can again turn into more money every single time another contract comes up. Right, right. And which they just did. Brandon Johnson just gave them more money in their contract. Yeah, and we should talk about this because, okay, so Brandon Johnson ran a weird campaign in respect to the police

in the sense that he didn't really run a, he didn't run an anti-police campaign i guess like his campaign was pretty pro-police but it also originally had things like taking cops out of schools and very specifically he ran on canceling the shot spotter contract which is a thing that everyone in like people in chicago who aren't who don't live in like cop neighborhoods basically like it's pretty popular to cancel this contract because it's it's millions of dollars a year going to nonsense that just throws cops everywhere and then he got into office and his budget still has the shot spotter shit in it so

electoralism win yay yeah i mean it I mean, it was an explicit, it was an explicit campaign promise. Like it wasn't just like, Oh, we were hoping that he would do this because he's like our big movement guy. It was like, he explicitly made it part of his platform was ending the contract to shot spotter. And, uh, now he is not. And there's, there's some time left before the budget hearing i think it's like i don't know like 55 days i might be off by a few days there but there's only around you know two

months left and since he's been elected so like the other thing i mean this is like the shady part too like since he's been elected he's been asked whether he'll extend the contract and he's just like refused to answer. Which is a really great politician stuff. Like, you know, you you know, your politicians being completely normal and nothing. Everything is above board when they just straight up refuse to answer questions. Only good things ever result from that. Only good things ever result from that. Yeah. And it's been, there's been like a lot of similar sort of just like, I don't know,

lack of transparency kind of incidents with him over the last, however long it's been since he's been elected. God has spent a long year. It's kind of like there's this pattern now. So yeah, I mean, there, there were people who, who kind of look, he was never like the abolitionist, like I'm going to abolish the police mayor. And like, I get that. I think a lot of people get that. But there's a pretty big departure kind of between how he's approaching policing and what, yeah, a lot of movement people or leftists or abolitionists want, you know, every encounter with a cop is a potential for violence. Right. And he's coming at it more from the side of like, well, we just need to rebuild trust in the police and,

and the community just needs to, you know, like we're just going to rebuild trust and we're going to, we're going to get these bad cops out. We're going to have only good cops left. And then everything, I don't, I don't, I don't know what the logic there is personally, but, but the, you know, the logic is that we'll just have good police encounters then. And it's just like this refusal to acknowledge that like policing itself is a problem.

Yeah. I mean, we are on year 50 of the mayor says we need to restore trust in the police. We'll get rid of the bad cops and everything like year 50. We are on what, what number of torture scandals are we on since people first started saying this? Like I, it's just. Right. We shouldn't be laughing at torture, but it's like, yeah, it's like every, I don't know, every month there is a new Chicago police scandal. I literally cannot keep track.

Yeah. And okay. So we're, we're going to talk about one of those scandals but first uh we're gonna talk about ads i was gonna do like a you know what else is a scandal but i don't know it's really late i've been up for an outrageous number of hours Thank you. varnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong though, I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better.

Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian.

Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him.

Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature.

I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me in a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works

while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Black Lit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Black Lit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we are back. So, okay, speaking of Chicago police scandals, there is a lot.

I mean, the CPD is always having scandals because Chicago cops are just evil. But yeah, do you want to talk about the specific ShotSpotter one that we're having right now? recent story, you know, that just came out. Uh, there's a political, uh, journalism site slash blog. They're also our homies. We've done a lot of work with them called people's fabric. And they wrote, you know, uh, an analysis of some videos that they obtained of what is like essentially a CPD gang. I mean, everybody's heard of like the LAPD gangs. Well, not everybody, but I'm sure a lot of listeners have followed the story out of out of and and this is definitely not the first instance of something like that happening in chicago but you know there were just a lot there was a lot of video evidence against these guys one of them's been indicted i don't know if the other three have um but yeah they were just driving around basically terrorizing this community, you know, a lot of just unlawful stops, stopping people on the street, shaking them down for cash, drugs, and a lot of guns.

And they were filing false reports about found guns. So like they would stop somebody, take their gun gun and then log it as like a gun that was found. And, um, you know, in one instance, they said that they were a mile away from where a shot spotter alert had gone off and claimed that they looked around and just happened to find a gun on the ground. They had taken the gun from a woman. They didn't find it on the ground, but they were able to use the fact that there was a shot spotter alert that went off in that area as a way to cover their tracks, basically. Yeah, and this is something...

So we talked about on the show like oh god was that like two years ago maybe it was a year ago a while back we talked about on this show um the chicago's uh used to have this police unit called special operations section sos which was disbanded after it was revealed they were doing literally the same thing, which is they would go up to people and rob them. And one of, Chicago has one of these scandals about once it like once a decade, there's like a big one of these and we're kind of due for one. We haven't had a really big one of these specifically.

There's an entire section of the CPD that's just a burglary or a drug ring. So I suspect we're gonna find out more about this stuff because it's it's about time that another one of these turns up but yeah i mean they're just like just rolling up on people just going give me your gun and then driving away and saying don't tell anyone which is really really yeah well and like also for for seemingly no reason in like some instances like there i mean we look we can't know all of their motivations for everything and a lot more is going to come out i'm sure like in the court proceedings but's like, were they trying to pad the gun retrieval statistics? And, or were they trying to do something else? You know, they were like a

tactical team. So I presume, I mean, I think it's the case that like, there are certain gun retrieval statistics that CPD wants to make. But, you know, the other stuff, like obviously taking cash from people, you know, like there's other things they were doing, you know, and there's always been, look, there have, I'm not going to allege anything that isn't proven in this specific instance, but I will say that there have always been

rumors about Chicago police officers specifically taking things like guns to like sell back, you know, to gangs, basically. And same with drugs, right? You know, these guys were logging some of them, at least. But what if there were ones that they weren't logging? Like, we don't know. I mean, this is just what we know happened and what was caught. I mean, this is just what we know happened and what was caught. And I mean, they were dumb enough to like have some of this caught on their body cams. It's like they were turning their cameras off for like some parts of these stops, but like not others. Or like the camera would be on and there's like, you know, cash and drugs and then like, oh, the camera goes off. And it's like, well, any logical person can deduce what may have happened here like why are

you turning your camera off right um and so yeah there have always been rumors about kind of like what these crews driving around are like ultimately doing with this kind of stuff and i think it just it varies depending on them but i would also add you know, what you mentioned, the special operations section, you know, we only recently learned there was like a Sun-Times investigation into all the Chicago cops who were on the Oath Keepers membership roll. Oh. And a number of those guys were in SOS, actually. So that's a fun little fact also. Yeah, that's another one of the, another episode in the endless parade of Chihuahua Police Department scandals.

Like, yeah, a bunch of these are in far-right militias, which is, it's just really interesting. So we did an episode pretty recently that was talking about David Graeber. One of the points that he makes in this essay on Batman and the problempd is this incredible nexus of it right i mean you it's literally the same person is all three of these things at the same time it is a cop who is in a far-right militia who is also like literally just doing organized crime at the same time it's really yeah you you used to have to sort of like make metaphors and

you no longer have to do that the metaphor just is real you're just physically describing the event it's really something yeah i mean i i when you when you really think about it i think policing in and of itself is just like a cult like anything else and it makes sense that like the same people who gravitate towards like militia groups and like white supremacist groups any any like i don't know group where people kind of have those like hardline beliefs about the world and then it's also just like a lot of these guys are like especially the ones

on like tactical teams they're all like fucking like traumatized war veterans you know they all have kind of these long backstories of like military service and just like to get onto like special ops or like a tactical unit you know etc they tend to look

for people with military experience not always but like frequently um and so there's also that intersection there too of like militarism and abroad and then like policing at home right yeah and that's a really common thread i mean just in like across the entire world this is a thing where like the the police off like the police groups that are the most likely to go completely rogue and either just start murdering people randomly or turn into organized crime things like are these special operations units there was like in 2020 there were these huge protests like anti-police protests in nigeria that were specifically about trying to get one of these special operations like police special operation

things i like abolished because special operations guys just kept shooting everyone and this you know like every single like this happens just everywhere in the world that these it is like you know i mean obviously normal cops also do crime and we talked also in another episode about some kind of normal cops who did a cartel in like the 2010s but the special operations groups go off the rails at a rate that is staggering which you would think someone in government would look

at this like even if you're a pro police person you would look at this and go wait maybe it's a bad idea to have specifically formed these units that every single time turn into a cartel but but no, no, they never do this because the point of cops is not to not form cartels. Well, I think also too, there's like a very, uh, I don't know, I guess neoliberal sort of line of thinking about like policing and how like we really really need like the tactical high skill kind of unit right like there's always like we're giving the cop we're always giving the cops more money

and that's for training training is a big justification for why we're always giving them more money but so is like you know skills and sort of technology and like i think um as we're dealing with i don't know like mass shootings and like all this really horrible stuff just like going on around us at all times too now it's like it's a really i think um easy way to justify policing to people is like under the guise of these like tactical units or or units with like a lot of firepower to deal with like the really really bad guys quote right like you know maybe those people might be like oh we'd like fewer cops patrolling our neighborhoods you know we're kind of we get like you know black lives matter or

whatever but they're like but we really need to you know have the big guns ready for when something bad comes to our neighborhood. And so I think that's also like a sticking point for a lot of people on the on the way to like actually thinking about abolishing the police, too, is like, what would we do without these units of guys with like all these skills and all these crazy weapons to like help us if if a if a bad guy comes? And of course, the guy like the bad guys are those guys. It's the same guys. Well, there's the more cynical side of it too, which is like, if you're the mayor of Chicago, it's like, well, someone has to shoot the Black Panthers, right? You need to have guys whose job it is to...

When, you know, when like Revolutionary Movement started up, you need when like revolutionary movements start up you need like someone has to start shooting those guys so yeah yeah so i i want to go back to talk a bit more about the the like shot spotter and the budget stuff that's been happening because so the current the current budget uh has what is it i think it like doubles the the the annual raises of that that cops were getting is that the right number i don't know if it doubles but i read that it was actually wait yeah so it's it's five percent up from like 2.5 so yeah it's doubled it's also the largest package of raises for any city employee union in modern history i mean i'm directly quoting a better government analysis but but but yeah no like literally it is it is an enormous

it is an enormous race and here's the thing the cops were thrilled with this contract uh the head of fop john cadenzara who is just like a racist misogynistic horrible just like garbage dump of a person you know was thrilled with with this contract was thrilled with this being passed you know and that's like number one sign that your mayor sucks is when like the cops are thrilled about something he did. So, so yeah, I mean, it's, it's a huge amount of money. There's, there's a bunch of other stuff in it, like, you know, salary grade changes and like stipends for stuff and bonuses. And there's some changes to like the body-worn camera policy too which are kind of concerning um but but ultimately it's like yeah brandon johnson is now the fund the police mayor like i don't know how you can say that he's not when you when you look at this like this is

just handing the cops more money yeah and, and Chicago cops are already just unbelievably dogshit overpaid. Chicago teachers are unbelievably underpaid. Yeah, so, you know, I mean, we are once again paying a bunch of people to rob us. It's really, it's good stuff. Yeah, and they get a lot of time off, too. I mean, look, they have a, they have a ton of benefits. There's a ton of, you know, privileges and things that, that the cops get, but it's kind of like he, he could have given them slightly less money. this contract almost feels like the way I've seen some people describe it is it almost feels like an act of like goodwill

towards the cops like an almost like I was like I'm giving you this thing that you really want in the in the hopes of like I don't know I don't know what are you trying to get out of it I mean I don't know what what the motivation is but it's like you could have done you could have done less

and you're going for like a lot so what's what's the deal there and you know the new superintendent too is like hugely concerning he picked a guy who's uh like an expert in surveilling communities ahead of like the dnc coming next summer uh the former head of the counterterrorism bureau, you know, like it's just, it's a lot of really disappointing moves. And I think a lot of people were really hoping to see, I guess, a more abolitionist kind of streak but but ultimately it's like he ran as a liberal like we knew this was coming but there was like almost like taking advantage i guess of like movement groups to sort of get get the power behind him um during the campaign but look our

alternative was also like an evil like lying maniacal paul valis so it's just like a shit sandwich it's like bad choices all around right yeah and i mean that just is chicago i mean it's illinois electoral politics in general is a choice between the guy who gives the police more money and the other guy who gives the police more money so yeah it's not good exactly again it really seems like we're going to get more shot spotter of this technology that is wrong over 90 of the time so it's great it's really well there's a few months left i mean hopefully look hopefully this is i i don't know there's arguments to be made for and against harm reduction, I guess, and whether it's like a worthwhile goal. But maybe there's still like a shot at like at least getting this part scratched out.

big lawsuit um and if nothing else you know perhaps he and his administration could be concerned about just like you know the bad press around it if it if it's included and so many people are opposing it but this is also an administration that like didn't care about the bad press that came with like saying we're building a detention camp on polluted land. Yeah, well, look, this is the thing that the fight over the police budget is distracting from, which is that we need to find a second toxic waste dump to build the migrant concentration camp on. So, you know, progressive values are happening either way. Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the

destruction of Google search, better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field. And I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong though, I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry

and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHot Radio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez.

Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him.

Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters.

From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Black Lit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Look, I frequently said all mayors are bastards. Which is like, corny.

But I think you just, it's fine, look, it's fine to vote, I guess, if that is your thing. Just don't convince yourself that once you leave the voting booth that the struggle is over.

Because whatever happens, this person, this authority figure in charge is your enemy. Like, it doesn't matter how nice he is. It doesn't matter how many jokes he cracks. Like, whatever you're trying to like resist or like liberate, like this person is going to stand in your way. Just by virtue of being the mayor. Like, it's baked into like what that is so i think it's just a matter

of being like clear-eyed about that rather than like convincing yourself that you can somehow like co-run the city like with the government yeah i mean i'm gonna okay i'm gonna take a a shot at a city on the other side of the world but fuck it i'm still mad about this okay so the the the nominal best case scenario for this inside an electoral framework was when uh barcelona and camus which is this uh sort of left-wing platform in barcelona made of a bunch of ex-anarchists i like managed to get managed to get a semi-sable majority on the city council and the first time they got their mayor elected the first thing that that fucking mayor did like a week into office was she knew where all the squats were in barcelona and the first thing she

fucking did was she knew which immigrant squat didn't have enough community support behind them to stop them from getting evicted and she had them evicted so you know this is what happens when you put activists in charge um they they do a more efficient job of uh being the kind of insurgency so oh my god yeah this is this is this is what you're getting into oh my god well yeah and i mean then it also becomes like its own smoke screen you know like just using the fact that like oh i was elected by activists or like i was elected by movement people so like you know i'm on your side and just using it as like a shield against like every move and being like well i know this looks bad but like you guys know like i'm i'm i'm, I'm your guy. Like I'm one of you, like, like, just trust me. We're doing this for the, for the right reasons. It might look bad,

but because I'm your guy, you know, it's okay. I mean, it's the same thing with like Biden and the, and the border wall. Now, I think ironically, our episode on that is going to be the episode that comes out right before this. So wait, sorry, sorry episode on that is going to be the episode that comes out right before this. So wait, sorry, sorry. Two episodes. Sorry.

It'll be two episodes before. Yeah. Oh, and two episodes after. Well, it's also going to be border wall shit. So, yeah, border wall bad. Fuck Biden for border wall. But it's like it's Biden's border wall. He's doing all this shit and then you know it's just if it was trump we know what the response

would be from supposed progressives yeah don't don't let people like put a coat of paint on a turd and hand it to you and be like no it's good actually we don't have to do this right but i mean Right. But I mean, also the the border wall. Do you remember there was a brief flash of time in October when when Brandon Johnson and his team announced they were going to visit the border wall? 24 hours, 72 hours. I don't know when, but, but at some point, then they like very quickly reversed the decision when they realized like how bad that would look as we have, like, like at that time there were thousands of people in police, like thousands of migrants who had, who had traveled here and staying on police station floors. And there was like they were

going to have this publicity stunt one and then they changed their minds about it and we're like oh yeah this is probably a bad idea but it's become this this like pilgrimage site i mean like i know aoc went there it's like liberal politicians like go there to be like oh this is so terrible and then they like you know just kind of let biden make it worse yeah so this this has been uh this this has turned into the uh liberal groups elected on big promises make your life worse episode well this has been naked athens here you could find us in the places uh where can people find you uh just you know on the hell site which i know you're back on now um unfortunately unfortunately yeah you know we have jinxpress.org up her site and then yeah twitter instagram all that stuff yeah so go

check out the drinks press people. They do great work. And yeah, cops bad. Cops bad. Cops always bad. Cops keep being bad. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the

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